PM Kishida to visit Fukushima plant on Sunday before wastewater release decision
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Mr Fumio Kishida said the government is at the final stage of deciding when the wastewater release from the Fukushima nuclear plant will begin.
PHOTO: EPA-EFE
TOKYO – Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he will visit the Fukushima nuclear plant on Sunday ahead of a final decision on when to begin releasing wastewater
“The government is at the final stage of when it has to make a decision,” Mr Kishida said on Friday in the United States following a trilateral meeting with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and President Joe Biden.
He declined to say when the water release will begin during the briefing, which was aired by public broadcaster NHK.
Japan plans to release into the ocean 500 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of water from the plant, which was wrecked by a tsunami on March 11, 2011.
The International Atomic Energy Agency in July green-lit the release of radioactive water that Japan says it can no longer store on-site, but Tokyo held off on doing so ahead of the meeting in Washington to avoid stirring political opposition in South Korea to Mr Yoon, sources earlier told Reuters
On Friday, the three countries agreed to deepen military ties
The plan to pump more than a million tonnes of treated water into the Pacific from the nuclear plant owned by Tokyo Electric Power Company has been criticised by Beijing, which has banned some seafood imports from Japan. It is also opposed by some citizen groups in Japan, South Korea and elsewhere.
Japan said it will remove most radioactive elements from the water except for tritium, a hydrogen isotope that must be diluted because it is difficult to filter. REUTERS
